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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29092149">the lives we've shared have brought us here</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/flyingblackbird/pseuds/flyingblackbird'>flyingblackbird</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Bifrost Incident - The Mechanisms (Album)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Blood Loss, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, F/F, Implied/Referenced Character Death, implied memory loss but not much</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 12:20:21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,415</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29092149</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/flyingblackbird/pseuds/flyingblackbird</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The train will reach Midgard eventually. Until then, Loki and Sigyn have decades ahead of them, with nothing but the churning engine and the slow but steady drip of Loki's blood.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Loki/Sigyn (The Bifrost Incident)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>the lives we've shared have brought us here</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p>
<p>The Ratatosk express rides through the rainbow swirling of the Bifrost. Or rather, what’s left of it. The locomotive with the engine room presses on alone, all other carriages are lost in the twisting tunnel behind it. Inside are its last remaining passengers, Loki and Sigyn.</p>
<p>They will be here for the rest of their lives. Loki’s blood drips ever so slowly through the gears and glyphs on the wall, keeping the train going. Eventually, she will fade away from blood loss. Sigyn will see her wife die again, slowly this time, but, she hopes, with less pain. Physical pain, that is. And when Loki’s blood finally runs out, Sigyn will be the first to be torn apart or burned or eaten by what the train brings. They both know this. But until then they have decades.</p>
<p>Knowing a truth and accepting it are two different things. And in Sigyn’s defense, she does not have the knowledge of the workings of the Outer Gods and the train itself that Loki does. In the first years, she talks through the mechanics again and again, looking for a way out, or at least a way to save one more life or steal one more year from the terrible things to come. Loki does her best to try and think of a solution. She knows deep inside that there is none, that slowing down the train is the best they can hope for. But she cannot trust her mind to tell her the truth, especially not on this. If they stopped fueling the train, would it really bring about the end or would it just collapse the Bifrost? No, it would spew them out somewhere between Asgard and Midgard and shift the whole system from reality sooner. Loki is sure of this. Can they steer it away? Make the train wander around the Bifrost for eternity? Impossible, it is bound to the tracks, and there is nothing to steer it with.</p>
<p>They go through every possibility two, five, fifty times, but the end result is the same. Loki grows weary of these talks, but she knows no way to make Sigyn accept what they both know. Sigyn knows how to adapt and move on, but there is no moving on here. This is it, for them and for their world.</p>
<p>When they don’t try to find a solution that doesn’t exist, they talk about times before. Happy times mostly, as it is easier to bear and Loki wants to cherish the memories she has regained as long as she still can.</p>
<p>“Remember when we danced in the kitchen to the forbidden Resistance songs?”</p>
<p>“Remember our first cat?”</p>
<p>“Remember how you used to braid my hair?”</p>
<p>“I can still do that.”</p>
<p>And so Sigyn braids Loki’s hair.</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>Loki hesitates to ask about it, which is why it takes two years for her to do it.</p>
<p>She decides it must be about two years. Time cannot be measured by anything but the steady bloodstream, but they don’t want to think about that too much. But Loki needs to know while her mind is still sharp enough.</p>
<p>“What happened after I died?”</p>
<p>Sigyn falls silent and stares at the wall and through time and space, back to that horrid moment when Loki collapsed screaming in front of Asgard’s elites, who wore a grim expression that told her they took no pleasure in this, but justice had to be served.</p>
<p>“The Resistance, we were…” Sigyn clears her throat. “Fenrir took charge, as planned and…”</p>
<p>Loki wanted to hear about how Sigyn felt, to give her an opportunity to share the grief she no doubt bottled up. Then again, this is exactly how Sigyn grieved. She talks about strategies, safehouses, infiltration, arrests, bombs. The details of years of planning, fighting, being defeated and planning again. In the end, they decided, if they can’t destroy the Ratatosk Express, they would make it their own. Odin’s odd insistence on taking every single high-ranking Asgardian with her on the maiden voyage was a chance better than they could have dreamt of.</p>
<p>Loki holds Sigyn’s hand through all of it.</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>After twenty years, or thereabouts, Loki can finally feel how her strength is fading. Talking about the past grows painful. All those people who either died long ago or are now left to unknown fates make their hearts ache. In her more optimistic moments Sigyn proclaims that, with the Asgardian government removed, Midgard might be free to determine its own fate now. But she is a realist at heart, that is what gave her the ability stay part of the Resistance without being caught for so long. She knows that chaos and violence are a much more likely outcome of a sudden power vacuum. She hopes the remaining resistance fighters didn’t wait too long for her to show up and guide them.</p>
<p>Since the past is too painful and the present an unknown void, they turn to a more distant past. Stories, one might call it too. They talk of heroes and villains, despots and democracies, life and death and pain and laughter. There is one tale they come back to time and time again. The story was well known, but Sigyn had used it to inspire resistance fighters after Loki had been executed. It was the tale of a king who ruled for millennia and conquered countless worlds. He had clone soldiers stronger than any army had ever seen. Yet eventually his tyrannical rule was toppled by a group of rebels. Sigyn had spent much time trying to divide fact from fiction in the many retellings of the tale. Though the details were debatable, the overwhelming evidence pointed to the story being true.</p>
<p>“It’s a hopeful story, I think. General White and the Noble 23 die in the end, but they ended the king’s tyranny.”</p>
<p>Loki could see why Sigyn had come to love the tale so much.</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>Another decade passes and Loki grows weaker.</p>
<p>There are no memories left that they have not dwelled on and no stories that they have not told. Most time is spent in silence. Sigyn leans her head next to Loki’s arm. Loki brushes through Sigyn’s hair with her fingers. The train hums.</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>“Do you…” Loki’s voice sounds small. “Do you think it’s worth it?”</p>
<p>“What do you mean?”</p>
<p>“Delaying. We’re just… putting the same terrible fate on other people. What right do we have to… to cause some people the pain meant for others?”</p>
<p>Sigyn thinks for a moment. There is no need to reply quickly, since time is all they do and do not have.</p>
<p>“Every moment… every heartbeat we spend here, someone out there is dancing. Or sleeping. Playing with their pet, maybe?”</p>
<p>“Someone is painting. An old woman is rocking in her chair. Friends are out celebrating, and… heh. Some people are probably arguing or crying, and some child is skinning his knee pretty bad, but that’s…”</p>
<p>“Part of being alive”, Sigyn finishes the thought. After a while, she adds “I’m glad we were alive.”</p>
<p>They do not talk about what happens to the child in ten, twenty or fifty years, when the train arrives.</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>Loki fades in and out of consciousness.</p>
<p>Her grip on reality has not been as strong anymore. She is disorientated and confused most times now. But her mind still calms when she feels Sigyn near, even and especially in those moments where she cannot recall her wife’s name.</p>
<p>It would be so easy to tell Loki everything would be alright. Sweeten her final moments in that land between dreams and death by telling soothing fiction. But Sigyn knows that this would be for her own comfort more than for Loki’s. She refuses to manipulate her again and she knows Loki does not want her to. She deserves to die in her right mind.</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>From her place in the corner, where she has sat for what feels like years – and maybe it has been – Sigyn hears the steady sounds of the train slow down. She watches as a final thin stream of blood flows from the long-unconscious body into the machinery. A moment of unbearable silence follows. Then she feels a sliding of the floor, a bending of the walls, as reality warps around her once again as it did so many decades ago. This time, there is nothing more she can do.</p>
<p>“I’m sorry. We did what we could”, she says to no one as rainbow shards start tearing through reality.</p>
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